CAREER: The Consequences of Efforts to Control Human Reproduction for Science and Medicine

这个CAREER项目研究了控制人类生殖的历史努力如何塑造了科学家和医学界理解当代生殖健康的方式。在19世纪和20世纪初，科学和医学界与国家合作，“改善”国家的遗传资源库，包括通过对边缘化人口的强制绝育。本项目调查这些努力如何影响世纪后期生殖医学的发展，以及它如何继续影响科学知识和生殖健康。这项研究通过向学生介绍生殖健康和不平等方面的持久问题来加强本科科学教育。该项目产生了一个数字档案，促进公众对医学，科学和健康不平等历史的理解。该项目使用档案方法和访谈相结合，以了解控制人口遗传学的努力如何影响科学和医学的理解以及目前的生殖经验。这项研究包括对1950年至2000年发表的生殖健康科学文章的内容分析以及与保健提供者和科学家的存档通信。该项目还收集和分析了50人关于其生殖健康经历的口述历史，并创建了一个新的公共数字档案来保存这些历史。解决这些研究问题为医学的社会研究、科学和技术研究以及对导致健康不平等的社会和历史因素的更广泛理解做出了重要贡献。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This CAREER project examines how historical efforts to control human reproduction shaped the ways scientists and medical communities understand reproductive health in contemporary times. In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, scientific and medical communities worked alongside the state to “improve” the nation’s hereditary pool, including through forced sterilization of marginalized populations. This project investigates how these endeavors influenced the developing medicine of reproduction in the late 20th Century and how it continues to influence scientific knowledge and reproductive health. The study enhances undergraduate science education by introducing students to lasting issues in reproductive health and inequality. The project produces a digital archive that advances public understanding of the history of medicine, science, and health inequalities. This project uses a combination of archival methods and interviews to understand how efforts to control genetics in the population affected scientific and medical understandings and current experiences with reproduction. The research includes content analysis of scientific articles on reproductive health published from 1950 to 2000 and archived correspondence with health providers and scientists. The project also collects and analyzes oral histories with 50 people about their experiences in reproductive health and creates a new public digital archive to house these histories. Addressing these research questions offers vital contributions to the social study of medicine, science and technology studies, and broader understandings of the social and historical factors that contribute to health inequalities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.